What Happens In Loveland
by Mrs Pepperpot
Summary: Scully and Mulder go to Loveland, Ohio, to investigate strange reports of space goo and Frogmen. Set after 'All Things' but before 'Requiem'. Please R&R.


What Happens In Loveland...

"Space goo?" Dana Scully said wearily as she leafed through the brief file of papers and photographs.

Mulder grinned and kept on driving.

"I don't know why I'm even surprised anymore. After seven years I should just read the file, nod my head and say, Ah, space goo, I wondered when we were going to get around to that." She looked over at her partner and raised a sceptical eyebrow.

"Actually it has many names, although the most popular one is probably Star Jelly. In Mexico they refer to it as _caca de luna_ or _moon poop. _It's been associated with meteor showers, shooting stars and even U. but it's origins have yet to be definitively determined." Mulder explained.

"Fascinating as all that is, what does it have to do with us? All I see here is a case of some people in Loveland reporting, what can only be described as increased libido, after coming into contact with this stuff. There does appear to be a higher than average birth rate in the area, but that could be down to any number of different factors." She stopped and flipped onto another page in the file.

"Oh, and let's not forget the two men who reported seeing a humanoid creature with a frog-face, who also happened to be carrying what looked like a magic sparkly wand. Have I missed anything?" Scully's patience was wearing thin.

"Sexy space goo and frogmen, seriously?" She sighed.

"Sounds like a fun day out to me." Mulder laughed.

"Actually, there have been various eye-witness reports over the years from Loveland residents, including two police officers, of encounters with these large frog-like creatures." He explained.

Scully took a deep breath and she decided not to protest any further. It was all part of what had become a perfunctory dance between them anyway. Now that their relationship had shifted gear, she was aware that there was more at stake than professional pride, or even deep friendship. Maybe that was what was making her feel so pissy today; the lack of definition in terms of their relationship. It was everything, and yet it was nothing, not in regard to what they were to each other. Perhaps it didn't matter, after all she did know for certain that they loved each other, and all the rest was just semantics.

Mulder had noted her prickliness and her tendency to lapse into periods of quiet contemplation. This behaviour was not without precedence, and he was tempted to shrug it off as hormonal. But the recent deepening of their relationship made him feel obliged to investigate further. After all, she might be pissed off with him, or something he'd done, at least. He decided that he had to find out.

"Dana, is everything okay? I mean, I didn't leave the toilet seat up again, did I?" He asked bashfully, and silently hoped that her mood was down to something so trivial.

They were supposed to be keeping work and the other stuff separate, it would be easier if he would just stick to the unwritten rules, she thought. When he called her Dana, it muddied the waters, and evoked memories of things that didn't belong out in the field with them.

"I'm fine. Everything's fine." She said tersely and hoped that he would let it drop.

Maybe it was hormonal after all, he reasoned, and he didn't want to get into that Vietnam. He accepted her answer and they were mostly silent for the remainder of the short car journey.

* * *

They arrived in Loveland, Ohio, and went straight to the address of Leonardo and Giorgio Ferrigno. They were the two brothers who had reported seeing the frogman on their way home from town. One of them had also once reported an increase in sexual appetite after finding a mysterious jelly-like substance in their garden. Mulder knocked at the door, and he and Scully waited for a reply. The door was opened by a tall, well-built and dark-haired man in his twenties.

"Mr Ferrigno?" Mulder inquired.

"My name is Leo, can I help you with something?" He asked politely and in a friendly manner.

"Leo, we are agents Mulder and Scully with the F.B.I, and we're here about the strange sighting reported by you and your brother." Mulder explained as he flashed his badge.

"You mean the frogman? That was way cool." Leo said with a big grin.

"Who're you talking to, Leo?" A young woman shouted from somewhere inside the house.

"Some F.B.I agents." He yelled back at her.

The woman suddenly came into view with a concerned look on her face. She appeared to be a little bit older than Leo, but not by much. She was pretty with long dark hair, and she also happened to be heavily pregnant.

"Leo, you know to come get me right away if anyone calls by." She scolded the big guy.

"Sorry Suzie." He said contritely.

Leo gave Mulder and Scully a grin as he went back inside the house.

"What's all this about?" The woman questioned.

"We were just talking to Leo about the creature that he and his brother reported seeing the other night." Mulder explained as he wondered why this woman was being so protective of him.

"Who are you?" He asked her.

"My name is Suzie Neary, I'm Giorgio's fiancee,." She replied.

"Why did you stop us speaking with Leo?" Scully queried.

"Leo has an intellectual disability, and I'm just looking out for him. You can come in and talk to him, but I'm staying too, okay?" Suzie explained as she ushered them into the house.

"Giorgio is at work right now, he won't be back until after five." She explained.

"Wasn't is Giorgio who reported, um... strange side-effects after coming into contact with the mysterious jelly-like substance? Scully inquired.

"Strange side-effects? How's this for a side-effect?" Suzie said as she gestured to her swollen belly.

"It was just over eight months ago, Giorgio found some of that gooey stuff on the lawn and tried to pick it up. He was like a crazed animal that night, there was no satisfying him, you know?" She explained.

Mulder and Scully exchanged a look and then nodded sympathetically.

"Listen to this." Leo exclaimed as they walked into the lounge area, and the room was suddenly filled with the sound of Kermit The Frog singing 'It's Not Easy Being Green."

Scully rolled her eyes, and the trace of professional interest she was feigning in this case began to quickly ebb away. She let Mulder do all the talking, and then she was happy to get back to the car. At least maybe now they could head back to D.C and get some proper work done. Her mind unintentionally drifted back to the image of Suzie tenderly rubbing her pregnant belly, and she felt an old familiar pang. It was proving harder than ever for her to accept that she would never have a baby of her own. She had wanted Mulder's baby when they had unsuccessfully tried IVF, and now they were actually in a relationship together, it had come back to haunt her. Maybe he didn't care; he'd certainly had some reservations before. But he did seem to be genuinely disappointed when the fertility treatment failed. Despite her earlier intentions to keep work and their personal relationship separate, she had to find out.

"Mulder, do you ever think about what would have happened if I'd succeeded in getting pregnant last year?" She asked tentatively and couldn't bring herself to look him in the eye, for as much as she needed to know how he truly felt, she feared it too.

He was taken aback by her question, and he immediately began to feel uncomfortable. How could he give her an answer that wouldn't cause her pain? He always thought that he had sacrificed his chance to be a husband and a father for the work. But when Scully had asked him to be her sperm donor, and he had agreed, he couldn't help himself from hoping. He had even started to fantasise about what their son or daughter would be like, and he had to admit that the prospect of fatherhood was more appealing than he ever thought it would be.

"I know how much you wanted it to succeed, and I would have given anything to make that dream come true for you. But we can't dwell on what might have been, that way madness lies." He said earnestly.

"Don't you ever want to be a father?" Scully couldn't stop herself from pushing him on the matter.

"I want you." He said pointedly, and without having to commit himself on the fatherhood issue. It was all too late now anyway, for both of them.

Scully didn't push any further, but no matter how sweet he was trying to be, she still wasn't satisfied with his answer.

* * *

Mulder and Scully visited some of the people who had reported increased sex drive after coming into contact with the Star Jelly. But there didn't seem to be any real danger to public health, and the substance itself had a high water content and no traceable DNA matter. The frogman sighting was being dismissed by Scully as nothing more than a disabled man's enthusiasm for Kermit and the rest of the Muppets.

"If we head back to D.C now, I can finish up that paperwork that Skinner asked for." Scully got back into the car and expected her partner to follow suit.

"We haven't even talked to Giorgio Ferrigno yet, I think we should at least find out whether he knows any of the words to the Rainbow Connection." Mulder said with a grin.

"Mulder, you can't be serious? This is a complete waste of time and bureau resources. I mean, what are you possibly hoping to find here?" She asked with exasperation.

"It's got a lot more going for it than some of our other cases. We haven't even seen any of the Star Jelly for ourselves yet, and I'd like to find out what the Ferrigno brothers really saw. I think if anything, Leo's disability makes him a more credible witness, because he isn't prone to fabrication." He argued.

Scully huffed, but she didn't offer any counter argument. It was probably too late to do anything else even if they did go straight back to D.C, she reasoned. They turned-tail and returned to the Ferrigno property to speak with Giorgio. It was now past the time that Suzie had assured them he would be home from work.

Leo was jumping about outside when they arrived, and he excitedly ran over to the car to greet them.

"Come see what I found." He said as he gestured for Mulder and Scully to follow him.

They went with him into the back yard where he was skipping around and pointing out to the lawn which was covered in blobs of white jelly.

Scully felt a squelch underfoot, and she looked down to see that she was standing in a large patch of goo. It had already started to seep into her shoes and she tried to kick it off of them. But instead, she ended up losing her footing and slipping ass-first into even more goo.

Mulder and Leo couldn't help laughing, but Scully was not seeing the humour in the situation at all.

"This day just gets better and better." She sighed.

Giorgio Ferrigno and his girlfriend came out to see what all the commotion was about, and they joined in the sniggering, which didn't help improve Scully's mood at all. Suzie then fetched her a towel, so that she could clean herself off a little, and they all went inside the house.

"So, Giorgio, tell me all about what you and your brother saw that night?" Mulder inquired.

"It was the damndest thing. Me and Leo were walking back home from buying beer at the local store. Then we got to the bridge, that crosses over the Little Miami River, and I saw something moving by the side of the road. It looked like a big dog or something at first, because it was all hunched over. But then as we got closer, it kinda jumped up to like the size of a ten year old kid, and it had a face like a frog. It sorta grinned at us, with this big mouth full of like razor teeth, and it had this wand thing in it's hand that had all sparks flying out of it. Leo called out to it, but it just jumped over the rails and disappeared. Maybe it went into the river, but we couldn't see down there because it was too dark." He explained.

"Have you ever seen anything like it before?" Mulder asked.

"Nope, but I've heard the stories, but I just thought it was a load of crap, you know?" Giorgio seemed genuine enough, but Scully wasn't satisfied.

"You said you were on your way back from buying beer, so you'd been drinking that night?" She inquired.

"Hey, I mighta had one or two, but I know what I saw." He stood firm.

Scully gave Mulder a look that suggested that her suspicions had been confirmed, and she signalled that she was done there. Her partner was reluctant to leave and he asked a few more cursory questions before joining her back at the car.

"Please tell me that we can go home now?." She said wearily as she surveyed the damage done to her suit by the goo.

"I think we should book into a motel and get you cleaned up. We can fly back to D.C in the morning." Mulder said.

Scully protested, but it was getting late and she really didn't want to travel home looking like she'd had a close encounter with a vat of jello. She was also beginning to feel a little bit tingly in places that were making her start to feel aroused. This was not going to be good for maintaining the professional work ethic, she sighed. The reports of increased libido after contact with the strange jelly substance were on her mind, as she began to feel very turned-on.

Mulder got them booked into a couple of rooms at the Loveland Inn. The necessity of having two rooms was for the F.B.I's benefit, as he assumed that they'd share one. But Scully hastily snatched away her door key, and ran inside the nearest room locking the door behind her. Mulder was perplexed by her behaviour, and he pounded at the door.

"Scully? I'm sorry about laughing before. Hey, Scully?" He pleaded.

She was pressed firmly up against the wood of the door, and her body desperately wanted her to let him in. She was burning up with desire, but she couldn't trust herself to speak or to move for a moment. She left him protesting outside while she stripped naked and ran into a cold shower. The icy water against her sensitive skin was only serving to stimulate her more, and she couldn't help running a hand over her erect nipples. Scully moaned with pleasure as her hand travelled lower to her hot centre and she began to stroke between her legs. She was so aroused that it was almost painful, and she knew that she needed Mulder to help relieve the ache. She jumped out of the shower and hastily bundled on a complimentary bathrobe, before running outside.

"Mulder, I'm sorry about before." She purred as she hammered at his door.

He quickly let her in and was shocked to see that she was dripping wet from the shower, and that she had a frenzied look in her eyes.

"Sc..." He didn't even have a chance to get her name out before she pushed him back on the bed and straddled him.

She started kissing him like a thing possessed as she frantically began pulling at his clothing to get access to what she needed. He tried to calm her and get her to take it slower, but his heart wasn't really in it; she was turning him on too much. She was grinding against his crotch with such persistence that he was glad when she got his fly undone. Scully didn't even wait until his pants were all the way off before she impaled herself on him and started to frantically work herself up and down on his length. The pace got faster and faster until she was screaming his name over and over again, and she came in a blinding flash that seemed to last forever. She didn't even realise, or care, that she had taken Mulder over the brink with her as she slumped down on top of him.

"Wow, that was... Wow." He gasped.

She wasn't done with him yet though, and as they were still joined, she began to gently stimulate him until he was ready for a repeat performance.

Scully finally started to feel the throbbing easing around the fourth time, and Mulder wondered if she was trying to kill him. He decided that he didn't mind either way, because if he was going to die then this was exactly the way he'd want to go. When she fell back against the bed after her fifth orgasm, the tingling sensation slowly faded and she felt quite content. Mulder presumed that it was her impromptu roll in the Star Jelly that was responsible for her rapacious sexual appetite. He couldn't help but smile to himself that his obsession with the paranormal was finally paying dividends.

"Thank you, Mulder." She sleepily sighed.

"You know, I think I'm gonna be pretty sorry to leave Loveland." He laughed.


End file.
